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AN APPEAL 



PROFESSORS OF CHRISTIANITY, 



IN THE SOUTHERN STATES AND ELSEWHERE, 



ON THE SUBJECT OF SLAVERY 



THE REPRESEJNTATIVES OF 



THE YEARLY MEETING OF FRIENDS 



FOR NEW ENGLAND. 



PROVIDENCE : 
PRINTED BY KNOWLES AND VOSE. 

1842. 



AN APPEAL 



It is the duty of those who are the professed followers 
of our Divine Master, to be concerned for the welfare of 
their fellow-professors, and for their steady advancement 
in the path prescribed by our Lord for all his servants 
to walk in ; and it is their privilege to extend to them 
a word of caution or entreaty in a spirit of love and 
good will, which desires the peace and prosperity of the 
whole heritage of God. " Glory to God in the highest, 
and on earth peace, good will toward men," was the an- 
them sung by angels at the advent of the Messiah ; and 
as we become partakers of his spirit, we, too, may be 
enabled to join in this angelic song. 

It is, we trust, in Christian, brotherly love, and for the 
promotion of the cause of truth and righteousness, and 
certainly not for the advancement of any temporal interest 
of our own, that we are induced, at this time, to present 
to our fellow-professors, of every denomination, this brief 
address on the subject of Slavery ; and the freedom that 
we feel ourselves required to use in relation to it, will 
not, we hope, be deemed obtrusive, when we remember 
the intrinsic importance of the matter treated of, and 
call to mind the one faith and ground of hope of all 
true professors of Christianity. We are believers in one 
Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for the sms of 
the whole world. We believe in him as a risen Mediator, 
who ever liveth to make intercession for us. We believe 
in the promised Comforter, — the Spirit of Truth, — to 



4- 

guide into all truth. We believe in a final day, when we 
must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, to 
receive a reward for the deeds done in the body ; and 
that it is not every one that saith, Lord, Lord, that shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven, but they who do 
the will of our Father, who is in heaven. It is they who 
have clothed the naked, fed the hungry, visited the sick, 
and showed mercy, that shall obtain mercy. These fun- 
damental doctrines are, we trust, faithfully received by all 
those who have a hope of salvation in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and they do acknowledge his holy precepts and 
commandments given forth for the observance of men as 
possessing obligatory and paramount authority to the 
present day. Among these binding injunctions is that 
universal rule which commends itself to the conscience 
of every man for its justice and wisdom ■ — " Whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to 
them" — a rule most comprehensive in its application, and 
eminently practical in its results. It extends to all whom 
God has created ; and " He made of one blood all the 
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." 
By creation the whole human family are brethren ; they 
are all " concluded in unbelief; " they all stand in need of 
redemption ; and Christ, in infinite love, died for all. All 
whom God made are the objects of his mercy ; all are em- 
braced in the means of salvation which he has appointed ; 
and all, without distinction of caste or color, must stand 
before him at the day of judgment ; and it is that you 
and we may appear with joy at his tribunal, and receive 
a gracious welcome into the mansions prepared for the 
righteous, 'that we are induced now to plead with you 
in love, and to entreat you to give a patient attention 
to what is presented for your solemn consideration. 

It may be known to you that, at one time, there were 
of our fellow-members of the society of Friends those 
that held slaves, as some of you do at this day : and 



while we would speak it with humility, we may, per- 
haps, be permitted to say, that we doubt not it was 
through the enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit 
upon their hearts, that they were enabled to see that this 
practice did not accord with that love which has been 
so mercifully extended to the children of men through 
their adorable Savior, and was inconsistent with his uni- 
versal rule, which we have cited. 

It is not our desire to revive any considerations which 
are calculated unprofitably to awaken your feelings, but we 
believe it to be the duty of us all candidly to contemplate 
the misery and suffering that are inseparably connected 
with slavery from its very beginning on the continent of 
Africa. It commences in exciting into action the worst 
passions of the human mind, inducing an awful destruc- 
tion of life, cruel separation of friends, and dreadful suf- 
ferings on the part of survivors. Let us not be willing 
to hide from our view the terrible eff'ects of the foreign 
slave trade^ or attempt to screen ourselves from the re- 
sponsibility that attaches to us under the plea that this 
traffic is interdicted by our government, and that all who 
are concerned in it are held as pirates by the laws of our 
land. The facts in the case incontestably prove that, while 
a market for slaves exists, the cupidity of degenerate and 
wicked men will devise means to evade the execution of 
these laws ; and we deem it pertinent to our purpose to 
spread before you some well-authenticated statements, 
which tend to show the extent of the traffic, and to ex- 
hibit, in some degree, its wickedness and cruelty. 

With the eff'ects of slavery at ho7ne many of you are 
familiar. You are witnesses of its influences in their 
various bearings in all the relations of life. You are 
conversant with the degradation and wretchedness which, 
in a greater or less degree, always attend it. But its 
more remote consequences may escape observation, and 
we may even lose sight in the distance of the necessary 



6 

connection of cause and eJJ'ect. It is a truth which we 
believe cannot be disproved, that to slavery, as a cause, is 
the slave trade to be traced, as an effect, with all its 
manifold misery and crime ; and we would appeal to all 
those who are concerned in the one, whether its aban- 
donment would not certainly produce the destruction of 
the other ; and can those who are the supporters of 
slavery, consistently, or with hope of success, plead 
against the slave trade, its legitimate offspring, its bitter 
and natural fruit. Let us be willing to examine this 
subject as it is, and act as our consciences, enlightened 
by the truth, shall dictate. 

The extent of the slave trade at the present day is 
much greater than could possibly be believed by those 
who have not informed themselves upon the subject. We 
avail ourselves of some of the authorities collected in a work 
recently published by Thomas Fowell Buxton, which we 
believe entitled to entire confidence — the work itself 
giving evidence of having been prepared with great care 
and candor, after much patient inquiry and investigation. 
It appears to be well established by this author, that, 
notwithstanding all that has been done to arrest this 
traffic, more than one hundred and fifty thousand human 
beings are annually conveyed from Africa across the At- 
lantic, and sold as slaves, being landed principally at 
some of the ports of Brazil and Cuba; and not less than 
fifty thousand more are required for the supply of the 
Mohammedan slave trade ; — making a total of more than 
two hundred thousand persons who are annually torn 
from the land of their nativity and sold into perpetual 
slavery.* 

* R. R. Gurley, the well-known advocate of the American Colonization 
Society, in a publication printed by him in England, in 1841, gives it as his 
opinion, from all the facts he could collect, that " nearly or quite half a mil- 
lion of wretched Africans, are annually torn from their homes, a moiety of 
whom perish in capture, during their march to the coast, in the holds of slave 
ships on their passage across the ocean, or during the first trials of toil and 
exposure m a foreign climate." 



After having very fully established that his estimate 
of numbers does not exceed the truth, Buxton proceeds 
to say, " Hitherto I have stated less than the half of this 
dreadful case. I am now going to show that, besides the 
two hundred thousand annually carried into captivity, 
there are claims on our compassion for almost countless 
cruelties and murders growing out of the slave trade. I 
am about to prove that this multitude of our enslaved 
fellow-men is but the remnant of numbers vastly greater, 
the survivors of a still larger multitude over whom the 
slave trade spreads its devastating hand, and that for 
every ten who reach Cuba or Brazil, and become available 
as slaves, fourteen, at least, are destroyed. This mortality 
arises from the following causes : — 

" 1st. The original seizure of the slaves. 

" 2d. The march to the coast, and detention there. 

" 3d. The middle passage. 

" 4th. The sufferings after capture, and after landing ; and 

"5th. The initiation into slavery, or the 'seasoning,' as 
it IS termed by the planters." The original seizure of the 
slaves causes a great part of the continent of Africa to 
be "a field of warfare and desolation, a wilderness in 
which the inhabitants are wolves to each other." " On 
the authority of public documents, parliamentary evidence, 
and the works of African travellers, it appears that the 
principal and almost the only cause of war in the interior 
of Africa, is the desire to procure slaves for traffic ; and 
that every species of violence, from the invasion of an 
army to that of robbery by a single individual, is had 
recourse to for the attainment of this object." * * * * 

" William Wilberforce, in his letter to his constituents 
in 1807, has described the mode in which slaves are 
usually obtained in Africa; and, after speaking of the 
dreadful and exterminating wars that are often waged by 
one tribe upon another, he remarks, — 

" In another part of the country, we learn from the 



8 

most respectable testimony, that a practice prevails, called 
village breaking. The village is attacked in the night ; 
if deemed needful to increase the confusion, it is set on 
fire, and the wretched inhabitants, as they are flying naked 
from the flames, are seized and carried into slavery. 

" These depredations are far more commonly perpetrated 
by the natives on each other, and on a larger or smaller 
scale, according to the power and nmnber of the assail- 
ants, and the resort of ships to the coast ; it prevails so 
generally as throughout the whole extent of Africa to 
render person and property utterly insecure." * * "Every 
man who has acquired any considerable property, or who 
has a large family, the sale of which will produce a con- 
siderable profit, excites in the chieftain near whom he 
resides, the same longings which are called forth in the 
wild beast by the exhibition of his proper prey ; and he 
himself lives in a continual state of suspicion and terror." 
The statements of Wilberforce have been corroborated by 
Bryan Edwards, himself a dealer in slaves, and an able 
and persevering advocate for the continuance of the traf- 
fic. In a speech delivered in the Jamaica assembly, he 
says, " I am persuaded that Wilberforce has been very 
rightly informed as to the manner in which slaves are 
very generally procured. The intelligence I have col- 
lected from my own negroes abundantly confirms his 
account ; and I have not the smallest doubt that in Africa 
the eff"ects of this trade are precisely such as he represents 
them to be." 

" But, it may be said, admitting these statements to be 
true, they refer to a state of things in Africa which does 
not 710W exist. A considerable period of time has indeed 
elapsed since these statements were made ; but it clearly 
appears, that the same system has obtained, throughout 
the interior of Africa, down to the present time ; nor is it 
to be expected that any favorable change will take place 
during the continuance of the slave traflic." 



" Professor Smith, who accompanied Captain Tuckey 
in the expedition to the Congo, in 1816, says, ' Every man 
I have conversed with acknowledges that, if white men 
did not come for slaves, the wars, which, nine times out 
of ten, result from the European slave trade, would be 
proportionally less frequent.' 

" Captain Lyon states that, when he was at Fezzan, in 
1819, Mukni, the reigning sultan, was continually engaged 
in these slave hunts, in one of which eighteen hundred 
were captured, all of whom, excepting a very few, either 
perished on their march before they reached Fezzan, or 
were killed by their captor." * * * * 

" We have obtained most valuable information as to the 
interior of Africa from the laborious exertions of Denliam 
and Clapperton. They reached Soudan, or Nigritia, by 
the land route through Fezzan and Bornou, in 1823, and 
the narration of their journey furnishes many melancholy 
proofs of the miseries to which Africa is exposed through 
the demands for the slave trade. Major Denham says, 
' On attacking a place, it is the custom of the country 
instantly to fire it, and, as they (the villages) are all 
composed of straw huts only, the whole is shortly de- 
voured by the flames. The unfortunate inhabitants fly 
quickly from the devouring element, and fall immediately 
into the hands of their no less merciless enemies, who 
surround the place ; the men are quickly massacred, and 
the women and children lashed together and made slaves.' 

'■' Denham tell us that the Begharmi nation had been 
discomfited by the sheik of Bornou, in five different expe- 
ditions, when at least twenty thousand poor creatures were 
slaughtered, and three fourths of that number, at least, 
driven into slavery. And in speaking of these wars, he 
uses this remarkable expression, — ' The season of the 
year had arrived, (25th November,) when the sovereigns 
of these countries go out to battle.' Commodore Owen, 
who was employed in the survey of the eastern coast of 
2 



10 

Africa, about the years of 1823 and 1824, says, ' The 
riches of Quilimaue consisted in a trifling degree of gold 
and silver, but principally of grain, which was produced 
in such quantities as to supply Mozambique. But the 
introduction of the slave trade stopped the pursuits of 
industry, and changed those places, where peace and 
agriculture had formerly reigned, into the seat of v/ar 
and bloodshed. 

" Contending tribes are now continually striving to 
obtain, by mutual conflict, prisoners as slaves for sale 
to the Portuguese, who excite those wars, and fatten on 
the blood and wretchedness they produce." 

'• In speaking of Inhambane, he says ; ' The slaves they 
do obtain are the spoils of war among the petty tribes, 
who, were it not for the market they thus find for their 
prisoners, would, in all likelihood, remain in peace with 
each other, and probably be connected by bonds of 
mutual interest.' " 

" Ashmun, agent of the American Colonial Society, in 
writing to the Board of Directors from Liberia, in 1823, 
says, ' The following incident I relate, not for its singu- 
larity, for similar events take place, perhaps, every month 
in the year ; but it has fallen under my own observation, 
and I can vouch for its authenticity : Kiug Boatswain, our 
most powerful supporter, and steady friend among the 
natives, (so he has uniformly shown himself,) received a 
quantity of goods on trust from a French slaver, for 
which he stipulated to pay young slaves ; he makes it 
a point of honor to be piuictual to his engagements. 
The time was at hand when he expected the return of the 
slaver, and he had not the slaves. Looking around on the 
peaceable tribes about him for his victims, he singled out 
the Q,ueaks, a small agricultural and trading people, of 
most inoffensive character. His warriors were skilfully 
distributed to the differe)it hamlets, and, making a simul- 
taneous assault on the sleeping occupants in the dead of 



11 

the night, accomplished, without difficulty or resistance, in 
one hour, the annihilation of the whole tribe : every 
adult man and woman was murdered ; every hut fired ; 
very young children generally shared the fate of their 
parents ; the boys and girls alone were reserved to pay the 
Frenchman.' " 

From a letter of McBrair, a Wesleyan missionary, 
recently addressed to the secretary of the Wesleyan 
Missionary Society, we make the following extract : — 
'' On other occasions, a party of men-hunters associate to- 
gether, and, falling suddenly on a small town or village 
during the night, they massacre all the men that off"er any 
resistance, and carry away the rest of the inhabitants as 
the best parts of their spoil ; — or, when a chieftain thinks 
himself sufficiently powerful, he makes the most frivolous 
excuses for waging war upon his neighbor, so that he may 
spoil his country of its inhabitants. Having been in 
close connection with many of the liberated Africans in 
McCarthy's Island, two hundred and fifty miles up the 
Gambia, and also in St. Mary's, at the mouth of that 
river, we had many opportunities of learning the various 
modes in which they had been captured, from which it 
appeared that the wholesale method of seizure is by far 
the most frccpient, and that without this plan a sufficient 
number of victims could not be procured for the market ; 
so that it may be called the prevailing way of obtaining 
slaves." After many other citations from various author- 
ities as to the cruelty and bloodshed incident to the seizure 
of slaves, Buxton proceeds to state, — "I could add, were it 
necessary, a thousand other instances of the scenes of 
cruelty and bloodshed which are exhibited in Africa, 
having their origin in the slave trade ; but enough has 
been said to prove the assertion with which I set out, — that 
the principal and almost the only cause of war, in the 
interior of Africa, is the desire to procure slaves for traffic, 
and that the only difference betwixt the former times and 



12 

the present day is this, — that the mortality consequent on 
the cruelties of the system has increased in proportion to 
the increase of the traffic, which, it appears, has doubled in 
amount, as compared with the period antecedent to 1790." 

The next cause of mortality, after the seizure^ is the 
cruelty exercised in the march of the slave and his deten- 
tion previous to embarkation. " The slaves are commonly 
secured by putting the right leg of one and the left of 
another into the same pair of fetters. By supporting the 
fetters with a string, they can walk, though very slowly. 
Every four slaves are likewise fastened together by the 
neck, with a strong pair of twisted thongs ; and in the 
night, an additional pair of fetters is put on their hands, 
and sometimes a light iron chain passed around their 
necks." " Such of them as evince marks of discontent 
are secured in a difterent manner ; a thick billet of wood 
is cut, about three feet long, and, a smooth notch being 
made on one side of it, the ankle of the slave is bolted 
to the smooth part by means of a strong iron staple, one 
prong of which passes on each side of the ankle." 

In this cruel manner are they forced to travel from the 
interior of the country to the coast, subjected to every 
privation and misery ; so that it is estimated, from the 
most accurate computation that has been attained, that 
the number of tliose loho die on the jonrney alone is equal 
to five twelfths of the whole. While detained at the coast 
waiting for embarkation, from want of sufficient food, 
from close confinement, and other causes, diseases of a 
most fatal character often supervene, producing a frightful 
mortality ; so that, in every stage of this dreadful traffic, 
we find the lives of its victims are continually sacrificed. 

We next advert to the middle passage, as it is termed, or 
the transportation of the slaves across the Atlantic ; and 
the sufferings here revealed are truly of the most appalling 
character, fully justifying, as we apprehend, the language 
used by William Wilberforce, in 1807. "The stings of a 



13 

wounded conscience man cannot inflict ; but nearly all 
which man can do to make his fellow-creatures miser- 
able, without defeating his purpose by putting a speedy 
end to their existence, will still be here effected ; and it 
will still continue true, that never can so much misery 
be found condensed into so small a space as in a slave 
ship during the middle passage." 

" The first feature of this deadly passage," saj^s Buxton, 
" which attracts our attention, is the evident insufliciency, 
in point of tonnage, of tlie vessels employed for the cargoes 
of human beings which they are made to contain." 

" We have a faithful description of the miseries of the 
middle passage, from the pen of an eye-witness, Falcon- 
bridge. His account refers to a period antecedent to 1790. 
He tells us that ' The men negroes, on being brought 
aboard ship, are immediately fastened together, two and 
two, by handcuffs on their wrists, and by irons riveted on 
their legs.' ' They are frequently stowed so close as to 
admit of no other posture tlian lying on their sides. 
Neither will the height between decks, unless directly 
under the grating, permit them the indulgence of an 
erect posture, especially where there are platforms, which 
is generally the case. These platforms are a kind of 
shelf, about eight or nine feet in breadth, extending from 
the side of the ship towards the centre. They are 
placed nearly midway between the decks, at the distance 
of two or three feet from each deck. Upon these the 
negroes are stowed in the same manner as they are 
on the deck underneath.' * * * * 

" In favorable weather they are fed upon deck, but in 
bad weather their food is given to them below. Number- 
less quarrels take place among them during their meals ; 
more especially when they are put upon short allowance, 
which frequently happens. In that case, the weak are 
obliged to be content with a very scanty portion. Their 
allowance of water is about half a pint each at every meal. 



14 

Upon the negroes refusing to take sustenance, I have seen 
coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel, and placed so 
near their lips as to scorch and bnrn them ; and this has 
been accompanied with threats of forcing them to swallow 
the coals, if they any longer persisted in refusing to eat." 
He proceeds to notice the case of a Liverpool vessel, which 
took on board, at the Bonny River, nearly seven hundred 
slaves, (more than three to each ton !) and Falconbridge 
says, " By purchasing so great a number, the slaves were 
so crowded that they were even obliged to lie one upon 
another. This occasioned such a mortality among them, 
that, without meeting with unusual bad weather, or having 
a longer voyage than common, nearly one half of them 
died before the ship arrived in the West Indies." He 
then describes the treatment of the sick as follows : — " The 
place allotted to the sick negroes is under the half deck, 
where they lie on the bare plank. By this means, those 
who are emaciated frequently have their skin, and even 
their flesh, entirely rubbed off, by the motion of the ship, 
from the prominent parts of the shoulders, elbows, and 
hips, so as to render the bones in those parts quite bare. 
The excruciating pain which the poor sufferers feel from 
being obliged to continue in so dreadful a situation, fre- 
quently, for several weeks, in case they happen to live so 
long, is not to be conceived or described. Few, indeed, 
are ever able to withstand the fatal effects of it. The 
surgeon, on going between decks in the morning, fre- 
quently finds several of the slaves dead, and among the 
men, sometimes a dead and a living negro fastened by 
their irons together." 

We omit many of the statements of Falconbridge, who 
was a surgeon on board a slave ship, because we do not 
wish to dwell unnecessarily upon this painful scene. 
The cruelties enacted in the middle passage upon the 
slaves have increased to an awful extent, since the trade 
has become contraband by the laws of nations, from the 



15 

fact of a different class of vessels being now employed than 
formerly, — those that have much less capacity for the 
accommodation of their human cargoes, in consequence of 
their construction being such as to render them the most 
•apid sailers, that they may outsail or avoid the armed 
•essels that are often engaged in pursuing them. 
" Laird, in his journal of the recent expedition to the 
iger, says, ' Instead of the large and commodious vessels 
which it would be the interest of the slave trader to em- 
ploy, we have, by our interference, forced him to use a 
class of vessels (well known to naval men as American 
clippers) of the very worst description that could have 
been imagined, for the purpose, every quality being 
sacrificed for speed. In the holds of these vessels the 
unhappy victims of European cupidity are stov/ed literally 
in bulk." * * * * " As a proof of the increase in the 
mortality on the middle passage, I may adduce," says 
Buxton, "the evidence of Jackson, (who had been a 
judge in the Mixed Commission Court at Sierra Leone,) 
before the committee on Sierra Leone, in 1830. In 
answer to a question, he said, ' I thirdc the sufferings of 
these poor slaves are greatly aggravated by the course 
now adopted ; for the trade is now illegal, and, therefore, 
whatever is done is done clandestinely : they are packed 
more like bales of goods on board than human beings, and 
the general calculation is, that if, in three adventures, one 
succeeds, the owners are well paid.' " 

Dr. Walsh, in his "Notes of Brazil," gives the follow- 
ing account of a Spanish slaver detained by the vessel of 
war, in which he returned from Brazil, in 1829. He says, 
"When we mounted her decks, we found her full of 
slaves ; she had taken on board five hundred and sixty- 
two, and had been out seventeen days, during Avhich she 
lost fifty-five. The slaves were all enclosed under grated 
hatchways between decks. The space was so low that 
they sat between each other's legs, and stowed so close 



16 

together that there was no possibility of their lying down, 
or at all changing their position by night or day. As they 
belonged to and Avere shipped on account of different in- 
dividuals, they were all branded, like sheep, with the 
owners marks, of different forms. These were impressed 
imder their breasts or on their arms ; and, as the mate 
informed me with perfect indifference, burnt with a red- 
hot iron. 

" The poor beings were all turned up together ; they 
came swarming up like bees from the aperture of a hive, 
till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation from stem 
to stern. On looking into the places where they had been 
crammed, there were found some children next to tiie sides 
of the ship. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to 
life or death, and, when they v/ere carried on deck, many 
of them could not stand ; some water was brought ; it was 
then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a 
fearful manner They all rushed like maniacs towards it ; 
no entreaties, or threats, or blows, could restrain them ; they 
shrieked, and struggled, and fought with one another for 
a drop of the precious liquid, as if they grew rabid at the 
sight of it. There is nothing which slaves, during the 
middle passage, suffer from so much as want of water. It 
is sometimes usual to take out casks filled with sea-water 
as ballast, and, when the slaves are received on board, to 
start the casks and refill them with fresh. On one occasion, 
a ship from Bahia neglected to change the contents of the 
casks, and on the mid-passage, found, to their horror, that 
they were filled with nothing but sea-water. All the slaves 
on board perished ! We could judge of the extent of their 
sufferings from the sight we now saw. When the poor 
creatures were ordered down again, several of them came 
and pressed their heads against our knees, with looks of 
the greatest anguish, at the prospect of returning to the 
horrid place of suffering below. It was not surprising that 
they had lost fifty-five in the space of seventeen days. 



17 

Indeed, many of the survivors were seen lying about the 
decks in the last stage of emaciation, and in a state of filth 
and misery not to be looked at. While expressing my 
horror at what I saw, and exclaiming against the state of 
this vessel, I was informed by my friends, who had passed 
so long a time on the coast of Africa, and visited so many 
ships, that this was one of the best they had seen, The 
height sometimes between decks was only eighteen inches; 
so that the unfortunate beings could not turn round, or 
even on their sides, the elevation being less than the 
breadth of their shoulders ; and here they are usually 
chained to the decks by the neck and legs. After much 
deliberation, this wretched vessel was allowed to proceed 
on her voyage. It was dark when we separated ; and the 
last parting sounds Ave heard from the unhallowed ship 
were the cries and shrieks of the slaves suffering under 
some bodily infliction." 

We give a few more extracts on this subject from the 
many details that might be cited. The Carolina, cap- 
tured in 1834, off Wydah. " This vessel was only 
seventy-five tons' burden, yet she had three hundred and 
fifty negroes crammed on board of her, one hundred and 
eighty of whom were literally so stowed as to have barely 
sufiicient height to hold themselves up, when in a sitting 
posture. The poor creatures crowded around their de- 
liverers, with their mouths open and their tongues 
parched for want of water, presenting a perfect spectacle 
of human misery." 

" In a letter from the Cape of Good Hope, of date 20th 
January, 1837, we find it stated that her Majesty's brig 
Dolphin had lately captured the corvette Incomprehensible, 
and that, on taking possession of her, the scene presented 
on board was harrowing in the extreme. One hundred 
had died of sickness, of the eight hundred embarked ; 
another hundred were lying nearly lifeless on her decks, 
in wretchedness and misery, and all the agony of despair ; 
3 



18 

the remaining six hundred were so cramped from the close 
manner in which they were packed, (like herrings in a 
barrel,) and the length of time they had been on their 
voyage, and the cold they had endured in rounding the 
cape, in a state of nudity, that it took the utmost exertions 
of the English sailors, favored by a hot sun, to straighten 
them." 

In the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette of 2d of 6th 
month, 1838, is the following paragraph : — "A letter from 
the Snake sloop of war, dated 3ist March, 1838, says, 
' We have captured a very fine schooner, called the 
Arogan, off Cape Antonio, having three hundred and fifty 
slaves, of both sexes, under the age of twenty, and have 
sent her into the Havana for adjudication. She cleared 
out from Gallinas, and lost fifty on her passage by death, 
owing to the crowded manner in which they were packed, 
resembling goods in a draper's shop.' " 

'^ In the parliamentary papers printed last year by the 
House of Commons, the following, among other cases, are 
reported : — " The brig Don Manuel de Portugal, from 
Angola, embarked six hundred slaves ; of these seventy- 
three died on the voyage." " Brig Adamastor, from 
Quilimane, embarked eight hundred slaves ; of these 
three hundred and four died on the voyage." " Brig 
Leao, from Quilimane, embarked eight hundred and fifty- 
five slaves ; of these two hundred and eighty-three died, 
or were thrown overboard alive, during the voyage. The 
small-pox having appeared among the slaves, thirty of 
them were immediately thrown overboard alive ; after- 
wards the measles made its appearance, of which two 
hundred and fifty-three died. The remaining slaves, five 
hundred and seventy-two in number, were landed on the 
coast of Brazil, at Mozambayo, near to Ilha Grande, but in 
so miserable a state that the greater part could not walk, 
but were carried on shore." 

If to the mortality arising from the causes already ad- 



19 

verted to during the middle passage, we add the hves 
destroyed by shipwreck, it will appear that not less than 
twenty- five per cent, of all those embarked perish during 
their voyage. Nor does the mortality cease when they 
are disembarked ; but after landing, and in the ' season- 
ing,' not less than twenty per cent, are destroyed ; and 
it would appear by as careful computations as have 
been made, that there is no exaggeration in estimating 
the mortality of the slave trade as follows : — 

" 1. Seizure, march, and detention, 100 per cent. 

2. Middle passage, and after capture, 25 " 

3. After landing and in the seasoning, 20 " 

145 
so that, for every 1000 negroes alive at the end of a year 
after their deportation, and available to the planter, we 
have a sacrifice of 1450." 

From the African Repository, of 8th month, 15th, 1841, 
we make the following extract, viz. : — 

"We cannot too often, nor too solemnly, call the atten- 
tion of our readers to the fact, that the slave trade, in all 
its infamy, is, at the present moment, going on and flour- 
ishing, and extending to a most lamentable degree. * * * 
It is computed that, at this very moment, twenty thousand 
human beings, crowded in the small and narrow slave 
ships, are floating on the ocean between the land from 
which they have been torn, and the mart to which they 
are destined. What a stream of horror ! what cries, what 
groans, must fill the air along their whole course! How 
many are just breathing their last ! How many just cast 
overboard ! Who can number the accumulated horrors on 
which the sun must daily look ? " 

Again, from the same periodical, we extract the follow- 
ing : — " When a slaver is chased by a cruiser, and is in dan- 
ger of being seized, she must be lightened. And as the 
slaves on board are less valuable than any other part of the 
cargo, the heaviest of them are thrown overboard first. If 



more is necessary in trying to escape the pursuing cruiser, 
men, women, and children, are hurried overboard without 
remorse, and in numbers proportionate to the danger. In 
some instances, when seizure becomes certain, every slave 
on board is thrown over, in the hope that the cruiser, find- 
ing no chance for head-money, will let her pass, and then 
she can return to port, take on board another cargo, and 
try again. The slaves are thrown over with the fetters 
that were placed on them before they were brought on 
board. To lessen the chance of their escape, they are 
sometimes cast in, fetters and all, in large companies ; and 
to insure their sinking before the cruiser can come and 
pick them up, weights are sometimes added to sink them 
immediately. But this is not the only mode of lightening 
the vessel. Often three or four slaves are crowded into a 
cask, which is thrown over with weights attached to it. 
One vessel threw over twelve such casks before she was 
captured. One vessel had five hundred slaves on board, 
and threw them all over. These scenes occur principally 
on the Western African station ; and it is said that even 
the sharks know this field of bloodshed, and are often 
known to follow the slave ship from the port." 

Appalling as is the view that has been presented of the 
foreign slave trade, it becomes us to contemplate it, and to 
remember that it is not probable any means can be devised 
to arrest this awful waste of human life, these multiplied 
and dreadful sufferings, while, by the continuance of 
slavery, a reward is offered to stimulate the avarice of 
wicked men. 

Nor are the miseries and heart-rending separations in- 
cident to the internal traffic that is prosecuted in our own 
country, to be passed lightly over in the catalogue of evils 
connected with slavery.* Notwithstanding it may be the 

* Many and strong are the points of resemblance between the African and 
American slave trade. Witness the manner in which the slaves are secured 
when driven through the country, or transported by sea, and the manifold 
sufferings to which they are subjected. 



21 

intention of many who hold slaves to prevent, in the pro- 
secution of this traffic, the separation of families, the sun- 
dering of the domestic ties which bind hearts together, 
whether high or low, rich or poor, bond or free, yet it is 
not always in their power to avert the parting of husband 
and wife, parent and child, brother and sister. Their care 
to prevent these cruel separations, even when thus at- 
tempted to be exercised, does not and cannot always avail. 
Your daily observation shows you that they are often 
perpetrated ; and bringing home the universal Christian 
rule, which it is our duty to keep always before us, how 
could we endure to have a parent, a child, or a bosom 
friend, torn from us, and plunged into uncertain but hope- 
less and bitter bondage.* 

It may not be necessary for us to point out the evils of 
slavery as it exists in our land. We need not offer an 
argmnent to prove what is self-evident, — its inconsistency 
with the universal, golden rule, and that, in the observance 
of this rule, the highest interest of man is promoted. But 
even could we disregard our future happiness in connection 
with this question, and limit ourselves to that which will 
conduce to our present quiet and the promotion of our tem- 
poral interest, we cannot doubt but that these would even- 
tually be greatly promoted by the exchange of the forced 
and tardy toil of the bondman for the requited, cheerful 
labor of the freeman. The experiment of emancipation, 
wherever it has been fairly tried, incontestably proves this. 
It has ceased to be matter of doubt and speculation, but 

* President Dew of William and Mary College, Virginia, in his celebrated 
attempted defence of slavery, makes the following observation : — " We have 
made some efforts to obtain something like an accurate account of the num- 
ber of negroes every year carried out of Virginia to the south and west. We 
have not been enabled to succeed completely ; but from the best information 
we can obtain, we have no hesitation in saying that upwards of six 
thousand are yearly exported to other states. Virginia is in fact a negro- 
raising state for other states ; she produces enough for her own supply, and 
six thousand for sale." 



99 



has already become established as history by the testimony 
of many intelligent, nnimpeachable witnesses. 

Would we secure present quiet, unmolested peace, and 
undisturbed fireside enjoyments? Let us put away the 
causes that now interrupt them, by an honest endeavor to 
do as we would be done by. Then shall we receive from 
those befriended a practical reciprocation of this govern- 
ing principle, and our hearts will be daily gladdened and 
made to rejoice in the smiles of gratitude and confidence 
which on every hand will meet us. 

To parents we would most earnestly appeal. Are you 
willing your precious children should continue to be edu- 
cated under the influences of slavery ? What are the 
habits they are prone to form ? what the consequences of 
the examples that are daily exhibited to them ? what the 
effects upon their moral and religious lives ? Oh ! let us 
remember that unto God are we to give an account for the 
lambs he has intrusted to our charge ; and we solemnly ask 
yon, and entreat you to view it in all soberness, — do you 
believe that the continuance of slavery is calculated, in its 
varied results, to conduce to the prosperity of your beloved 
children in this present life, or to promote their hopes of 
happiness in the life to come ? or, does it not rather in- 
evitably tend to induce habits of indolence, indulgence, and 
vice, which lessen their present usefulness, and peril their 
future hopes ? Parent, art thou willing to leave thy child 
involved in these fearful responsibilities ? We conjure 
thee, as thou lovest him, ponder this subject well. 

We are fully aware that there are many who hold slaves 
that deprecate slavery, but who see clearly no way of es- 
caping from it. We feel tenderly for these, and would offer 
them the language of encouragement to attend to plainly 
manifested duty. Pray for an increase of faith. Our 
heavenly Father doth not require that of us which he will 
not enable us to perform. He hath all power in heaven 
and in earth, and he will remove difficulties from the way 



23 

of those who are concerned, above all things else, to know 
and do his will. It is a truth of the most serious moment, 
and which we desire should be impressed deeply upon our 
hearts, that upon the professor's of Christianity devolves the 
responsibility of the cojitijiuance of slavery in our land. 
Let these cease to tolerate it among their own members ; 
let them exert their influence against it, and it will no 
longer continue to tarnish the name of our common 
country. 

We again repeat, that he who calleth us to the discharge 
of any duty, will make a way for us if we look in faith 
unto him for help. What has been done by a portion of 
the Christian community may be done by all. We would 
speak very humbly of our own religious society, and of the 
course pursued by them in relation to slavery ; and yet, for 
your encouragement in freeing yourselves from the evil, 
we think it right to advert to it. Our forefathers, and some 
of those still living, in advanced life, who held slaves, were 
brought to see, and feel too, that it was not for them to 
keep their fellow-beings in bondage, and yet consistently 
to profess to be the followers of Him, who, through the 
mouth of the prophet, hath declared this to be the fast that 
he hath chosen, " to loose the bands of wickedness ; to 
undo the heavy burdens ; and to let the oppressed go free, 
and that ye break every yoke." And when this was made 
evident to them, they dared not consult with flesh and 
blood, but, in confiding reliance upon God, they proceeded 
to liberate all whom they had held in bondage ; and He 
who, they doubted not, required this of them as their re-, 
ligious duty, did indeed enable them to accomplish it, and, 
we reverently believe, abundantly blessed them therein ; 
and unto Him may all confidingly look for a blessing upon 
their honest endeavors faithfully to do his will on earth. 

And now, in conclusion, we desire very impressively, in 
the love of the gospel, to bring home to every bosom the 
solemn query, — Are my hands clean, in the sight of God, of 



24 

the blood of my brother ? Let us mvestigate the subject 
with hearts reverently turned unto the Author of all good, 
and with fervent aspirations that the truth may illuminate 
our understandings, and that it may now be presented to 
us in that light in which it will appear at the day of final 
judgment. May we continually remember the declaration 
of Holy Writ, " If thou forbear to deliver them that are 
drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain ; if 
thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not, doth not he that 
pondereth the heart consider it ? and he that keepeth thy 
soul, doth not he know it ? and shall not he render to 
every man according to his works ? " 

May the God of all grace and consolation bless us, and 
enable us clearly to perceive our duty and faithfully to 
pursue it, that we may experience the verification of the 
ancient promise, "Then shall thy light break forth as the 
morning, and thy health shall spring forth speedily, and thy 
righteousness shall go before thee ; the glory of the Lord 
shall be thy rere-ward. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord 
shall answer ; thou shalt cry, and he shall say. Here I am." 

Signed, on behalf and by direction of a meeting of the 
Representatives of the Yearly Meeting of Friends for New 
England, held at Providence, Rhode Island, the 2d of the 
2d month, 1842. 

SAMUEL BOYD TOBEY, Clerk. 



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